Phil Miller

On the compute side, we really want to make good use of the AMD MI300A APUs to get a large fraction of the code GPU-accelerated in the shortest possible timeframe. This fits well since LLNL Tuolumne will be our main compute resource, with SDSC Cosmos providing an additional development and test platform. Tuolumne - https://lnkd.in/guXDkZ2a Cosmos - https://lnkd.in/gqt7mtr2 #hpc #gpucomputing #AMDgpus #scientificcomputing

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Thanks! National Hydropower Association and Malcolm for highlighting this work. The article titled "Adding Batteries to Hydropower Facilities Could Increase Dam Lifespan, Potential Revenue" can be found here. https://lnkd.in/gYeqm3vY

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🔥 Hot news! 🔥 Check out the latest on ThermalTracker-3D (led by Jennifer Wehof) and how Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is partnering with industry to bring an environmental monitoring technology to market. Read more here! ➡️ https://lnkd.in/gKgK-2WJ

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This is a cool story about a NASA researcher in the Bay Area who created a new dataset built from ground-based air quality sensor packages that cost less than $1,000. The data have potential for validating satellite measurements and providing local details for pollution studies. https://lnkd.in/gFNvpkH8

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Pinc is now available as a C program, eliminating interpreter overhead and substantially speeding up computation for large-scale structural analyses. It’s still under active development, so please reach out with any questions, feedback, or issues. 🔗 GitLab: https://lnkd.in/d23FquCb #AlphaFold

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Caltech Scientists Transform Atomic Motion into Hyperentangled Quantum Resource Introduction: Turning Quantum Noise into a Breakthrough In quantum systems, even atoms cooled to near absolute zero continue to “jiggle” from residual thermal energy. Traditionally seen as a nuisance introducing noise, this atomic motion has now been reimagined by Caltech researchers—not as a flaw, but as a powerful quantum resource. Their work represents a milestone in quantum information science by demonstrating hyperentanglement in neutral atoms for the first time. Key Highlights: From Optical Tweezers to Quantum Leverage • Optical Tweezers in Quantum Systems: • Use focused laser beams to trap and manipulate single atoms with extreme precision. • Widely used in atomic clocks, quantum computing, and foundational physics research. • The Challenge of Atomic Motion: • Even under ultra-cold conditions, atoms exhibit residual thermal motion. • This motion introduces quantum noise, degrading system performance and entanglement fidelity. • Caltech’s Breakthrough: • Researchers have harnessed atomic motion to generate hyperentanglement, a higher-order entangled state involving multiple quantum properties simultaneously (e.g., spin and motion). • First-ever hyperentanglement in massive particles, previously achieved only with massless photons. • Technical Approach: • Utilized strontium atom arrays held in optical tweezers to enable controlled interactions and entanglement. • Precisely manipulated both the internal (spin-like) and external (motion) states of atoms to produce robust quantum correlations. Why It Matters: A New Paradigm for Quantum Devices • Enhanced Information Encoding: Hyperentanglement enables more complex quantum states, potentially increasing information density and error resilience in quantum processors. • Scalable Neutral Atom Platforms: This approach enhances the capabilities of neutral atom arrays, one of the leading architectures for scalable quantum computing. • Broad Application Impact: • Could significantly benefit quantum communication, metrology, and sensing, where enriched entanglement improves precision and throughput. • Sets the stage for multidimensional entanglement architectures, pushing beyond current limitations of single-property entanglement. By turning a longstanding limitation into a feature, Caltech’s team is helping redefine what’s possible in quantum control and computation. Keith King https://lnkd.in/gHPvUttw

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Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory will be using AI troubleshooting to improve operations at the National Ignition Facility (#NIF). It will be interesting to see how much this improves their operations as we move closer to sustainable #fusion reactions. Check out the article here: https://lnkd.in/eeuAayP2

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ORNL researchers are strengthening U.S. economic security with machine learning software for fast, accurate power grid modeling ⚡📊 A new “black box” modeling method simulates electric grid behavior up to 20 times faster than conventional tools — while protecting proprietary equipment details inside a ‘black box’. The discovery helps utilities maintain the energy supply, prevent blackouts and accelerate innovations to improve energy resilience across the nation’s power grid. Learn more about this innovation 👇 https://bit.ly/3Yw5XJk #Energy #Innovation #PowerGrid #MachineLearning

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California is a crazy quilt of regulatory requirements and it can all be so much simpler, and more effective for energy customers, by doing just a few simple things that Rebecca recommends here-->

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"The LBNL researchers also found that electricity prices charged by investor-owned utilities are higher and have risen faster than those charged by public power utilities." https://lnkd.in/gyPpUuA8

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I was recently honored to be able to facilitate the technical session at the Pacific Northwest Breakthrough T1D (https://lnkd.in/gGcynXS2 ) Community Summit. Three lead researchers in this field discussed recent advances for beta cell therapies. Beta cell therapies are shaping the path to a cure for Type 1 diabetes through restoration of insulin production. Cell therapies place insulin-producing beta cells back into the body to provide insulin independence. The goal for beta cell therapies: Prevent, halt, or reverse the loss of beta cells by: •     Creating unlimited supply of cells •     Developing ways to keep them safe and healthy in the body •     Thanks to years of Breakthrough T1D leadership and investment, several cell therapies are in human clinical trials—and they are making insulin. The researchers who shared this exciting research: Peter Cook, PhD, Lead Research Scientist  at Seattle Children’s Research Institute Mark Bach, MD, PhD, Chief Medical Officer at GentiBio Snehal Patel, B.S, Executive Vice President and Chief Technical Officer at Sana Biotechnology

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I presented our work at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL)—“Hybrid Energy Storage and Gas-Fired Generation for Enhanced Operational Efficiency and Flexibility”—at the 14th IEEE Electrical Energy Storage Applications and Technologies (EESAT) conference, sponsored by the IEEE Power & Energy Society, last week. In this work, we introduced a modeling framework that integrates battery energy storage with gas-fired plants to improve operational flexibility, increase efficiency, and reduce fuel consumption. This work is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Electricity | U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Storage Division. We received great feedback at the conference and are now working on expanding the work. If you work in gas generation, storage integration, or plant operations, I’d really value practical industry feedback. Happy to share the slides upon request. Thanks to my co-authors Hyeonjin Kim, Konstantinos Oikonomou, and Di Wu.

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I am excited to share that David Montes de Oca Zapiain, Ph.D. and I will be presenting our work on ML-based anisotropy software on January 20! Join us as we delve into the innovative applications of machine learning in understanding and modeling anisotropic materials. This presentation promises to be insightful for anyone interested in the intersection of machine learning and material science. #MachineLearning #Anisotropy #MaterialScience #Research #Innovation

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How do you tune Control Barrier Functions to be non-greedy? I'm presenting our work on “Learning Safety-Guaranteed, Non-Greedy Control Barrier Functions Using Reinforcement Learning,” at the #IEEE Aerospace Conference tomorrow, March 12, at 4:30 PM, in Jefferson! Control Barrier Functions are a powerful tool for safety-critical control, but in practice, they can behave greedily, prioritising immediate safety actions that can be overly conservative and hurt overall task performance. In this work, we explore how reinforcement learning can be used to tune Control Barrier Functions to become less myopic and better aligned with long-horizon mission objectives, while retaining the computational efficiency of a QP formulation. This work was done together with Dr. Nathan Wallace, Prof. Salah Sukkarieh, and Prof. Roberto Armellin. You can find our follow-up work, conducted under the supervision of Prof Roberto Armellin and Prof Richard Linares at https://lnkd.in/eeUWgQxU. Thank you, Alex Posadas, for taking this work even further! :)

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1/3 of FOSS maintainers are unpaid, 1/3 are the only maintainer of their open source project, and almost three quarters of surveyed FOSS projects are maintained by three people or fewer. Here's how an #EU fund could help, with pitfalls: https://lnkd.in/eTKxgrWF

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Efrain Mendez Flores is a Civil and Environmental Engineering postdoctoral researcher in the UCI Robot Ecology Lab and spearheaded the RaccoonBot project. “We wanted RaccoonBot to feel approachable and spark curiosity, especially in younger audiences or people who may not typically engage with robotics or environmental monitoring. By giving it an animal-inspired, friendly appearance, we turned it into more than just a machine — it became a character that invites interaction and storytelling.” https://ow.ly/8ECI50VUfYA

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#GRETA to Open A New Eye On the #Nucleus Researchers have completed major construction of the Gamma-Ray Energy Tracking Array, a precision detector that will expand our understanding of the structure and properties of #atomic #nuclei. Berkeley Lab https://lnkd.in/gCkWqtig

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For the California fusion innovation ecosystem, the moment is now. This is one of my takeaways from the statewide fusion convening we just held at UC San Diego, in conjunction with General Atomics and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Right now, universities, national labs and federal agencies are working together to solve the remaining R&D challenges that are holding back the ability of fusion startups to deliver power plants capable of running 24/7. Also right now, fusion startups in California and around the country are in direct conversation with local and state government agencies regarding where to build pilot plants and future manufacturing facilities. The fact that both of these things — and so much more — are happening right now across our fusion ecosystem is an indication of the dynamic, fast changing fusion R&D and commercialization environments we are all now operating in. As an engineering dean at a school with a long-standing focus on fusion and fusion-enabling technologies, it’s clear to me that universities and others in the public sector need to meet this moment. And in fact, there was broad consensus at our California fusion convening that we need to accelerate when it comes to public-private coordination across the state. Here at UC San Diego, we are certainly giving it our best effort. Just over a year ago, we launched our UC San Diego Fusion Engineering Institute. Since then, momentum has continued to build. Some recent key achievements:  ▪️ Jacobs School engineers were awarded $4M for a new collaborative fusion research effort funded by the University of California National Laboratory Fees Research Program to address tough shared challenges previously surfaced by the California fusion community.  ▪️the PISCES Lab is now running with an incredible upgrade. A $15 million U.S. Department of Energy award allowed for the addition of an ion beam accelerator to his lab’s existing experimental infrastructure. The upgraded facility fills an important need for fusion researchers in the public and private sectors working to develop new fusion reactor materials. ▪️Earlier this year, scientists and engineers at General Atomics and UC San Diego established a Fusion Data Science and Digital Engineering Center in San Diego. ▪️This year, UC San Diego became the new home to the nonprofit Fusion Power Associates (FPA). This is just scratching the surface — there is much more to come. If you’re interested in empowering UC San Diego to meet the fusion moment, please get in touch. I can’t overstate the value of graduate fellowships in fusion — to give just one example. Read more about all of these fusion updates in our Jacobs School November newsletter: https://lnkd.in/gE2ZCvUx In the meantime, wishing each of you a wonderful Thanksgiving and restful weekend. 

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